Peggy was and is an icon, but against these other ladies I voted for her.

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But why?

Peggy was the only one on the list that completely dominated her quad and then won the Oly by a landslide outskating everyone.

Hamil was stellar at the games, but it was iffy going in and any of the medalists could have switched around on the podium, as they often did. Same with Kim and Tara, plus all of Tara's much discussed drawbacks in general.

Witt barely won her first one on the thinest of 5/4 splits, and he second one was hardly amazing. She was kinda shaky in both, but as always capitalized by just making less mistakes than the others.

Kim is still skating and could very well win a 2nd gold. All the US ladies were also teens (Yama was 20, but 94 was only 2 years later for her) when they won. Unlike Witt, who was fully funded by the government and had nothing to think about but skating skating skating, their families paid for everything and were under a lot of stress. Nor did Witt have the temptation of multi $$$$ contracts. In fact, Witt really had no choice but to continue. But if you want to think that Witt was a shoe in for Calgary, but Peggy, Dotty, Kristi and healthy Tara had no chance in hell of ever beating Trixi, Anett, Oksana or Sarah you go girl. I just won't be able not to a little.

Not Lipinski yet! Does anyone remember her difficult program in Nagano? Yamaguchi, although I really like her skating, did not have a clean LP in either her 92 Olympic or World Championship wins and didn't have much competition either because in both the Olympics and Worlds that year, almost everybody made mistakes! So I'd say since Lipinski almost always skated clean with a difficult program, Yamaguchi should go first!

I voted for Kristi, but it looks like Tara is on her way out. I'd give Tara another round, she beat tougher competition, whereas Kristi always benefited from Midori either royally screwing up or not being present. I do give Kristi some credit for showing up to 1992 Worlds after her big Olympic win, though.

Yes, but i can argue the 6.0 system and the fact that she had very low technical content that the judges never marked harsh enough

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From 82-86 she was one of the technical leaders. The only skaters who had more technical content in 84 were 12th and 13th in figures. In 88 the only two skaters who did much more technically on the night easily beat her in technical scores in the Olympic LP and one beating her easily overall in the LP.

I agree she isnt the best skater though. Hamill for her time was an incredible skater, even if her amateur stats werent the most dominant. Kristi was easily a better skater, especialy considering she didnt compete that much later and dwarfes Witt in technical ability.

Tara Lipinski was one of the fiercest competitors ever, but she had the body of a child when she won so it's hard for me to vote out one of the other skaters. It was so easy for her to rotate those triples. We have no idea how Lipinski would have skated once she was older. Plus Lipinski was all about the jumps when the rest of this field was not.